1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an assay chip which can be appropriately used in various biochemical detections, and more specifically, the present invention relates to a disc-like assay chip which is mounted on a centrifugal device such as a rotational disc and can perform detection or quantitation on a target substance through optical measurement after a specimen and a reagent react by use of a centrifugal force generated by rotation of the centrifugal device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recent developments in the fields of medical treatment, healthcare, food, and medicine have heightened the importance of probing, detecting or quantifying biological substances and chemical substances such as Deoxyribo Nucleic Acid (DNA) or enzyme, antigen, antibody, protein, virus and cell. To address this issue, the invention proposes various assay chips and miniature chemical chips (hereinafter collectively referred to as assay chips) which provide simple and convenient measurement of these substances. A series of assay and experiment operations performed in a laboratory can be performed on a miniature chip within a chip. Such a chip has numerous advantages: only a small quantity of specimens and reagents are required, the detection can be performed at low cost, high speed, and with high yield, and the detection results can be immediately obtained at the site where the specimens are collected. This assay chip is appropriate for use in biochemical detection such as blood detection.
The prior art includes examples of an assay chip formed on a disc-like substrate like an optical disk and having multiple liquid storage grooves (grooves) and minute flow paths for connecting these grooves (hereinafter, the whole loop (pattern) including various liquid storage grooves and flow paths for connecting these grooves of the assay chip formed on the substrate is collectively referred to as a fluid loop), and a centrifugal force generated by rotation of the disc whose center serves as the centrifugal center is used to move liquids (specimens or reagents) in the liquid storage grooves, thereby performing the specified reaction (such as in non-patent document 1). This disc-like assay chip also has many of the advantages described above; then, centrifugal force is used, so peripheral apparatuses such as a pump or valve are not required. The disc-like assay chip also has substantial advantage in that it enables miniaturization of the whole assay system.
Non-patent document 1: Hizuru Nakajima, “FLOW ANALYSIS METHOD USING A COMPACT DISK-LIKE MICROCHIP,” The Japan Society for Analytical Chemistry, July 2009, p. 381-382